Best Practice: How to synchronize Active Directory to your Apple iPhones and iPads

The Microsoft Active Directory contains the contact information of all employees of a company. Users and contacts can be synchronized by messageconcept PeopleSync to your Apple iPhones and iPads and other devices. PeopleSync is able to fetch names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and even profile pictures from the AD objects. It is possible to connect PeopleSync to one or multiple Active Directories.

To bring contact data from Active Directory and other data sources to your mobile devices from Apple and other vendors, PeopleSync is the perfect solution. PeopleSync and Apple iOS devices both support the standardized prootocols LDAP and CardDAV:

The LDAP protocol allows an online search in the PeopleSync Directory. This protocol can be used to make the Microsoft Active Directory available without synchronization. The address books can be searched online, but Caller ID resolution won’t be available with LDAP on the iPhones.

The CardDAV protocol is used for offline synchronization of PeopleSync Address Lists to the native iOS Adress Book application. The availability of the data in the iOS Adress Book is a requirement to resolve numbers of incoming calls or in your missed calls lists.

Both protocols can be published via your firewall for availability via 3G. Alternatively a company can decide to grant users access to PeopleSync via VPN or in the corporate WiFi network only.